If you are maintaining a game level built in 2017, a VFX shot rendered with backburner on old nodes, or an ArchViz scene with proprietary scatter maps, Update 13 is the most stable version of this feature ever released.

is not a search for a cutting-edge tool; it is a search for reliability within a specific software vintage .

Keywords used: Populate Terrain, 3ds Max 2016, Update 13, scattering, terrain, ArchViz, instances, landscape, modifier, troubleshooting.

In earlier versions, painting masks was laggy. In Update 13:

Since Autodesk discontinued support for 2016, here are fixes for the three most common "Populate Terrain 2016 13" errors: